 Hello everyone, my name is Matthew Gaddy and I am your Engineering Productivity Coach and time blocking is a great strategy for creating space for you to work on tasks with your undivided attention and that's what we're going to be talking about today. Tips, strategies and tools that I've picked up that I've read that will help you to use time blocks in a more effective and productive manner. The first tip that I have for you guys is eliminating distractions. We're going to go through a couple things that you guys can use to eliminate distractions before they happen when working on the time block and that's pretty much the first key number one. Eliminate distractions before they happen. If you're distracted during your time block time, that distractions won. So whatever you need to do, make sure that you are eliminating your distractions before that time. Some ways that you can do this is set a timer on your phone for that time block duration instead of just using your phone as a clock. Set your timer, put your phone somewhere else in your office and your desk somewhere else inside your cubicle so you don't have to look at it and just let your timer go off when your time block is done. Another thing you can do is put your phone in airplane mode or do not disturb mode so it's not going to be ringing and buzzing and chiming during your work time because you'll begin to think about that and what is this? What could it be? You want to make sure that all your focus and all your attention is on whatever you're working on. If you're using a computer, turn off all your email notifications, your email pop-ups or your chimes, the same thing with your phone. You want to eliminate all those distractions, all those things that can take your focus away before they happen. If you work in an office, one other thing you can do is to close your door to show that your coworkers, hey, not right now. If you work in a cubicle, another thing you can do is just hang a piece of paper on your wall that says, I'm working on X, Y, and Z at this time. Please do not disturb. Come back at this particular time if you have any concerns. What you're doing with this particular sign is saying, one, don't bother me right now. But two, if you really do have something, bring it to me at this time and I can give you my full, undivided attention. This is just a way where you're making yourself unavailable, can make you more available in the future. Not right now, but definitely later, I can give you all my full attention. The last tip that I have for you guys is to put at least 20 minutes of space between the end of one time block and the beginning of another. The reason we want to do this is so that, one, our brains have time to synthesize the information that we've absorbed in the first time block, and two, to give our brains time to relax before the beginning of our next time block. Think about your brain as an actual physical muscle. Your brain just did an entire workout for up to 90 minutes in that first time block. You want to give it time to relax, time to cool down, time to build the muscle and synthesize the information before you throw it into another workout focusing on whatever your next task is. When you allow yourself that space, you'll begin to reduce mental fatigue. You'll begin to have times where you understand what's going on at a deeper level because you have time to allow that information to set in. You won't look at your next time block with dread because you're like, oh my goodness, I just finished this, I have to go into another. Make sure you have a space in between your time blocks of about 20 minutes. That seems to be a sweet spot. Any more than that, any less than that, you begin to have some of the negative effects. So there's just some of the quick tips that I have for time blocking. If you have any more questions about how you should apply time blocks, leave them down in the comments below and let me know if you guys want to see another one of these. I literally have like four pages of tips for time blocks, but I wanted to make sure that I was hitting the highlights, the things that will make the most impact on this one. But if you want to see another video, please let me know. I'll be glad to provide them for you and I will see you guys in the next video.